


that girl is a problem

by maurascalla



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-05
Updated: 2014-06-05
Packaged: 2018-02-03 12:35:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1744823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maurascalla/pseuds/maurascalla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was nervous when she pushed open the door. She had a list of excuses on the tip of her tongue for why she was visiting Karen, for why she was in her room, but they all died away when she saw Karen’s eyes on her, dark and angry. Gone was the soft girl from only moments before. It startled Mandy. “I know what you did,” Karen said, voice light and airy, like she were talking about the weather. Mandy blinked, suddenly more nervous than she’d ever been. </p><p>“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mandy spat back, vicious, but it only made Karen smile.</p>
            </blockquote>





	that girl is a problem

**Author's Note:**

> A canon divergent au where Mandy didn't hit Karen as hard with her car, and she got away with a broken arm, leg, and some internal bleeding. My timeline on s3 is a little off, but it won't matter soon enough. 
> 
> Pairings, characters, and warnings will be added as I go.

“What’d you hit?” 

Mandy turned away from her dad’s car, bloodied rag clutched in one hand, Windex in the other, and saw Mickey standing in front of their gate, squinting at her from the sidewalk. He was smoking a cigarette and holding a bottle of something wrapped in a brown paper bag. He’d been angrier and more explosive than usual for the last few weeks, and Mandy wasn’t sure if she should answer him honestly. She wasn’t looking for a lecture on how to properly get rid of a bitch. Her brothers were fans of dismembering and disposing, but Mandy never really had the constitution for that. Sure, she could bury some pedocunt alive and wait around for her to suffocate to death, but she didn’t think she could actually pull off cutting up a body. 

“Girl at school,” she answered. 

Mickey nodded and told her to check in with Jamie’s car guy, Manny, for that crack in the windshield. Mandy wasn’t surprised when he didn’t ask her why she ran over a classmate with the car. They weren’t really a sharing and caring kind of family. If she’d been at Lip’s someone would have demanded to know, then maybe helped her clean up. 

She wasn’t at the Gallaghers’, though, she was at her own shit house, so when she looked behind her again, Mickey was gone and she was alone. 

It only took an hour to get Karen’s hair out of the grill. 

**

Mandy didn’t understand why Lip felt the need to be by Karen’s side at the hospital, and she said as much to Ian on their way into school. Ian had laughed, a little bitter, and said, “I have no idea,” and it hadn’t made Mandy feel any better at all. 

“She’s awake now though,” he continued. “Apparently, she’s pissed her leg is broken.” 

Mandy blinked. “She’s still like, all there?” she asked, gesturing at her head with the hand that wasn’t wrapped around the strap of her backpack. 

Ian laughed again, tugging at the her ponytail gently. Mandy squawked indignantly. “Yeah, and I guess she’s really mad at Lip for some reason. He won’t talk to me about it. He hasn’t said anything to you?” 

Mandy shook her head, ponytail shaking behind her as if to emphasize her confusion. “No.”

The sun shined brightly in the clear sky and illuminated the strands of Ian’s hair, making them stand out against his pale skin. It wasn’t cold, but there was a biting breeze that blew through and made Mandy wish she’d worn a thicker sweater. They were silent for a moment, lost in their own thoughts, and she wondered what Lip was doing. She thought about Lip all the time, it felt like. 

“Is Mickey really marrying a whore?” Ian asked out of no where, and Mandy was glad for the distraction from her problem. They talked about Mickey and Svetlana, a Russian hooker her dumbass brother managed to knock up, who Mandy’d only met once and wasn’t sure she liked, until they got herded through the front doors. 

“I’ll see you at lunch?” Mandy asked, fingers clutching the strap of her backpack tightly. Ian nodded and gave her a bright smile. 

“Yeah, sure,” he replied, touching her shoulder. 

When Ian was gone, heading in the opposite direction for his math class than Mandy went for her history lesson, she was left alone with her thoughts. They ran a mile a minute and always came back to, _well shit I have to kill Karen Jackson._

**

She waited until she was sure Lip was out with Kevin before she went to the hospital. 

Mandy had only been to a hospital once before, when Iggy had gotten fucked up by an angry ex-girlfriend with a penchant for baseball bats and beating people with them when they cheated on her. Iggy’d almost died as a result, and he was laid up in a semi-private room with internal bleeding and six broken bones for almost a week before the doctor would let him go home. Mandy’d gone to visit him with Jamie, who was out on parole and only managed to stay out for a month before he failed a piss test. 

When Mandy saw Iggy laid up like that, covered in bruises and bandages, she felt her blood boil. She’d only stayed in his room long enough to get the bitch’s name before making a beeline for the door, revenge plan in the works. No one got to hurt her family like that.

This time felt different though. She didn’t know where she was going, and she wasn’t sure what she’d do when she got there. Mandy hunched her shoulders when she walked through the sliding doors and into the lobby, hands in her jeans pockets. The receptionist, a chubby black woman with her hair in pretty braids, watched Mandy warily as she walked up to the front desk. 

“Can I help you,” she asked, capping and uncapping a ball point pen. She looked up at Mandy with hard eyes. 

“Yeah,” Mandy curled in on herself, shoulders up by her chin. She kept her hands in her pockets. “I’m looking for Karen Jackson’s room?”

“Relation?” the woman said, discarding the pen and pecking at a computer keyboard behind the counter, out of Mandy’s sight. 

Mandy faltered but settled on, “Friend,” when the receptionist looked up at her expectantly. 

“Room 375,” the woman said. “But visiting hours end in twenty minutes,” she warned, pointing at Mandy with one short, chubby finger. Mandy nodded and thanked the woman with a slight smile. It was all she could muster. She wasn’t like Ian, who always knew what to say and what to do to make people like him. She didn’t know how to be anything but exactly who she was or show exactly how she felt. And right now, she felt like shit. 

The elevator ride up to Karen’s floor was quiet, lonely, and Mandy stared at her fuzzy reflection in the metal doors. She wasn’t going to kill Karen today. She couldn’t, since the woman at the front desk had seen her face and heard her voice. There were always witnesses in hospitals, anyway. But she had to see her, had to know what she’d done. Plan for the future. 

Mandy did what she could to make herself feel more confident, to make herself feel like she belonged here, and fixed her hair and straightened her shirt, but nothing really helped. When the doors slid open, Mandy’s jaw was set and her hands clenched together. 

The door to Karen’s room was cracked open, and there were excited voices all clamoring for dominance. None of them were Karen, and when Mandy peeked in through the opening she saw Batty Sheila and Chody arguing with each other while Karen glared at them balefully from her hospital bed, casted leg up in stirrups. 

“Mom,” Karen said, her voice softer than Mandy had ever heard it. It was like watching a chameleon change color, watching the half of Karen’s face she could see from the doorway shift from pissed to soft and tired looking. Her eyes drooped down, hair falling in her face. She smiled weakly at her mother, and just like that, the adults had stopped yelling over one another.

“Oh, sorry honey!” Batty Sheila said, hands coming together and hiding her face. “We’ll just, go home! You get some good sleep okay?” Karen graced her with a bright smile, still weak and watery, but blinding. Mandy saw the back of Batty Sheila’s head nod enthusiastically. 

“I will, Mom, I promise. Go home, okay? I’ll be fine. I love you,” she replied, and Mandy was impressed by how sweet and vulnerable this girl seemed in comparison to the girl she knew from school. Batty Sheila and Karen’s old-as-fuck husband began to gather their coats and bags from around the room, and Mandy took that as her que to move away from the door. She waited at the other end of the hallway for the circus to leave town-- Karen’s family behind the closed elevator doors, before she made her way back to Karen’s room. 

She was nervous when she pushed open the door. She had a list of excuses on the tip of her tongue for why she was visiting Karen, for why she was in her room, but they all died away when she saw Karen’s eyes on her, dark and angry. Gone was the soft girl from only moments before. It startled Mandy. “I know what you did,” Karen said, voice light and airy, like she were talking about the weather. Mandy blinked, suddenly more nervous than she’d ever been. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mandy spat back, vicious, but it only made Karen smile. There were small cuts on her face that stretched gruesomely, and Mandy wished she could look away. She was angry with herself for not killing Karen, for not finishing the job. Why hadn’t she pressed down harder on the gas? 

She sighed, “Did you tell Lip?”

“No,” was Karen’s simple reply. When she didn’t elaborate, Mandy stepped further into the room, hands shoved deep into the pockets of her rattiest black jeans. 

“Why not?” she asked, cautious. 

Karen cocked her head to the side and looked up at Mandy, her eyes too big, and said, “You know, I think I’m impressed.”

Mandy furrowed her brows and curled her lip. She pulled her hands from her pockets and held them loosely at her sides, not prepared for a fight, but ready in case of one. Karen’s face, her voice, was pissing Mandy off. “The fuck are you talking about?” 

“You really took this trite love triangle trope to a whole new level, Mands! Attempted murder! That’s really breaking the mold!” Karen said with a high, mocking laugh. 

“So you aren’t,” Mandy began, shrugging her shoulders. Karen’s behavior was giving her whiplash and she wasn’t sure how to react. “Fucking, I don’t know, pissed?”

“Oh, I’m pissed. I’m so fucking pissed off,” Karen said, and this time she wasn’t smiling. “But I’m done. Lip isn’t worth this. You almost killed me.” She laughed again, “If you want him so bad, you can have him!”

“It wasn’t about having him!” Mandy ground out between clenched teeth. She glared at the other girl, her fingernails biting into the palms of her hands because she couldn’t help how they curled into fists. “He’s going to get out of here! He’s going to make it out, and you were going to stop him!”

Karen looked like she wanted to laugh, but wisely didn’t. Mandy wasn’t sure she’d be able to keep from strangling her if she did. “You’re adorable,” Karen said instead. 

There was a long pause, and Mandy wasn’t sure what to do. She did that a lot, barreling into things without thinking them through. She was reactionary, like her father, like her brothers. When Mandy felt things, she went with her gut without thinking, and she spent the majority of her life cleaning up after her own messes. Karen was just another mess she’d have to deal with. Mandy couldn’t go to jail, not with midterms coming up. She was so close to graduating, and she’d be the first Milkovich ever to do so. 

“I know you think you have to kill me,” Karen said, interrupting Mandy’s thought process, “but you really don’t have to.”

“I wasn’t going to!” Mandy snapped, flashing her teeth. Karen scoffed, and Mandy felt weirdly chastised. She hunched her shoulders around her ears.

“Look, I’m not going to tell, okay? I’m not stupid. You’d like,” Karen paused, picking at her fingernails anxiously. “You’d send Mickey, probably. You’d send him to cap me, then he’d steal all of my mom’s pills to make it look like a break-in.” She sighed dramatically before repeating, “I’m not stupid.”

Mandy honestly hadn’t thought of that, but it wasn’t a bad idea. Despite herself, she was impressed with the blonde girl. Looking around the hospital room, she saw the empty bed next to Karen’s, sheets turned down and lights turned off. There was a tray of uneaten dinner hovering by Karen’s elbow, the one not in a cast, and her left leg was hanging from the ceiling in stirrups. She looked sad and pathetic and Mandy wasn’t sure why, but she felt kind of miserable about it. 

“You won’t tell,” she ordered, forcing her head high. She was a Milkovich. She could kill a bitch, she wouldn’t feel bad about it. Karen should be afraid of her. Hearing her say Mickey’s name brought it back for her. She could be this-- she knew this. 

Mandy smiled viciously, straightening her shoulders. She reached into the pocket of her hoodie and pulled out a butterfly knife she’d taken from Joey a few months back. She flipped it open, skillful and straightforward, and held it nonchalantly down by her side. “You’ll tell Lip to fuck off. You won’t talk to him again.” 

Karen nodded, biting her lip. “Got it.”

Mandy lifted her chin, a habit she’d picked up from Ian, in a move Lip’d called _the chin._ She looked down at Karen, left side of her mouth quirking upwards, snarling. “Fucking right,” she said, flipping the butterfly knife closed. “Get some good sleep now, Karen,” Mandy said, mocking Batty Shelia’s tone, and Karen’s eyes widened comically. She was pissed, and it made Mandy laugh. 

With that, Mandy left the hospital. She smiled all the way home. 

**

The next day at school, Lip was avoiding her again. She tried to talk to him when he got there, Ian hot on his heels, but he waved her off. He ducked out of sight and disappeared down a hallway before she could chase after him. Mandy let out a groan of frustration. She hadn’t been able to get a word in edgewise with him since she’d smashed into Karen with her dad’s car. 

“What crawled up his ass?” Mandy asked Ian, who shrugged. He picked at a stray thread on his plaid button up. He looked so clean and pressed, like a new book or a kid from a Sears catalog. She’d grown used to his tidy brand of handsome, but sometimes it still threw her for a loop. It made her want to mess him up, maybe throw some dirt at him, muss up his hair. She bit her lip. 

“He’s not talking to me either,” Ian said. He paused before continuing, “I think- Mandy-” 

“What?” she demanded, whirling around and glaring up at her friend. Mandy was terrified, thinking that maybe he knew. She could put up with so much, but she couldn’t stand Ian ever thinking less of her, and she was certain that he would be upset about the attempted murder. 

Her breath was coming out in gasps, chest heaving up and down. She watched his expression shift from pity to worry, and she realized she had nothing to worry about. Ian still didn’t know what she’d done. Lip still didn’t know what she’d done. Just her and Karen and no one else. She forced her breathing to slow and avoided Ian’s eyes, embarrassed by her panic. 

“I just-” Ian began, reaching a hand up to grip her shoulder carefully, like he was afraid he might spook her. “I don’t think he deserves you, Mandy.”

“He’s your fucking brother!”

“Yeah,” Ian agreed, “but he’s a fucking terrible boyfriend. He cheated on you, a couple of times, okay? And he’ll never get better.”

Mandy put a hand on top of Ian’s on her shoulder and squeezed. Her throat felt tight, constricted and heavy. Ian wrapped his other arm around her shoulders, backing them up so they were out of the general flow of student traffic. When they were safely tucked into a corner created by the end of a line of lockers and the continuation of a wall, his bigger body shielding her from the curious eyes of their peers, she buried her face into his shirt. 

“I thought- it’s so stupid but I thought he’d leave with me,” Mandy said into Ian’s chest. She felt his breath stutter and when she looked up, she saw him nodding, jaw clenched tightly against what she assumed were tears. Ian was always kind of a pussy about emotional stuff. 

“Do you want to get out of here?” Ian’s voice was thick, and Mandy was right, he was fighting to remain stoic, either for her benefit or his own. Regardless, she nodded enthusiastically. Ian backed them out from their corner, his arm slipping from her waist. Mandy held on to the hand on her shoulder, but lowered their arms so they were holding hands.

Together, they slipped out a side entrance, avoiding eye contact with the other kids making a break for it before the school day even began. Ian tangled their fingers together to the sound of the first bell ringing in the distance and asked, “Where you wanna go?” 

Mandy shrugged, but pulled at his hand until they were headed to his house. With the kids and Lip at school and Fiona at work, they should have the place to themselves. Unless Fiona’s boyfriend showed up, but he’d be at work too. 

“Let’s get high and pretend Family Guy’s funny,” she said, trying to smile. The one she got in return was blinding and even though it didn’t reach Ian’s eyes, it was the truest smile she’d seen from him in a while. 

**

Mandy had her stolen iPod on at full blast, playing something poppy and synthesized, while she and Ian danced around the house in their underwear. It was noon, they were high, and the world looked beautiful. 

“I love you,” she told him, her hand in his. She swung her arm up and pulled him so he had no choice but to dip under it. She twirled him a second time, and he laughed. He still looked like a kid from a catalog, but he also looked dazed, messed up, and Mandy was a little proud that she did that to him. She broke everything she touched, but she never broke Ian Gallagher. 

“Love you too, Mandy,” he sang back, twirling her in response. She was wrapped up in his arms, feeling content and safe, when the front door was flung open and Fiona stormed in. 

“Jesus, Mandy!” Fiona snapped, hand flying over her eyes. “Ian! What the fuck!”

“We got cheese all over our clothes!” Ian said, handing Mandy a blanket from the back of the couch. Frowning, she covered her body with it. “We got high and made mac and cheese! I flipped over the pot and-”

“Ian,” Fiona smiled. She peeked out from behind her fingers, and her smile stretched over her face in a wholly unconvincing way. Mandy tried not to look at her. Fiona hated her. “Why aren’t you guys at school?”

Ian looked at Mandy who shrugged. “Lip was being a dick,” he told his sister, who nodded. 

“He is that,” Fiona said, pulling out a cigarette from her purse. “You got a lighter?” she asked Mandy directly. She shrugged, but started looking for the Bic they’d used to light their joint. When she found it, she presented the lighter to Fiona, who took it with a curt, “Thanks.”

“I thought you were at work?” Ian asked, turning off Mandy’s iPod before sitting on the arm of their couch, still in his boxers, arms wrapped around his body like a shield. Mandy took a seat beside him on the couch, his shins bumping against her arm. 

“School called. Thought I’d check here before getting too worried about it.” Fiona lit her cigarette and took a drag, exhaling through her nose. She gave Ian a look that could curdle milk before saying, in a voice that left no room for argument, “No more skipping school, Gallagher.” 

Mandy looked up at Ian, his head ducked bashfully, and saw him nod. She snaked her hand around his ankle for moral support. Mandy understood, on an intellectual level, that the Gallaghers listened to Fiona, mostly did what she said, but she never could wrap her head around the idea of an authority figure. The closest thing she had was her dad, when he was around, and he never cared about shit like school. 

“What is up with you lately, kid?” Fiona asked, quieter. “Was it the CPS shit?”

The air in the room was heavy, the tension so thick, Mandy’s breath got caught in her throat. She squeezed Ian’s ankle, and he looked down at her through his pale eyelashes, and she could remember when she loved him so much it hurt to breathe near him. It was different now, a different kind of love, but she still remembered and squeezed tighter. His eyes closed, eyebrows pushing together. There was a bruise on his cheek, and it looked like it hurt. She didn’t know where he got it. 

“Yeah, Fiona, it was the CPS shit,” Ian said. His eyes were still closed, so Mandy looked up at Fiona, standing in the middle of the living room floor, cigarette clutched in tense fingers. 

“What’s she talking about, Ian?” Mandy asked, pinching at Ian’s ankle. He inhaled a deep, shaky breath before opening his eyes and grinning widely. 

“It’s just the CPS stuff, guys! Don’t worry about it!” Before they could say anything else, he jumped down off the couch and booked it to the kitchen. “I think I heard the dryer, I’ll just go-”

Mandy felt miserable and naked, sitting in a house she was just getting used to with a woman who hated her, high and wanting to cry even though she wasn’t entirely sure why. She hunched her shoulders, curling in on herself. Her eyes slipped closed and she imagined the next couple of days, sleeping alone at the Milkovich house, pushing her dresser in front of her bedroom door. She was contemplating asking Ian to stay over with her when her eyes slid open. In her face was Fiona’s cigarette, held out like a peace offering. She took it with a pathetic excuse for a smile. 

“He’ll be fine,” Mandy said quietly, looking up into Fiona’s worried eyes. She didn’t know, really, but Fiona looked like she needed to hear it. She took a drag of the other woman’s cigarette and handed it back. She volted herself up off of the couch and threw the blanket from around her shoulders. It landed on the floor by her feet. “Ay, Ian? Are the clothes actually done? I wanna get out of here before Lip shows up.”

Ian came back into the living room, fully clothed, and handed Mandy her pants and t-shirt. She put them on quickly, proud of the way her hands didn’t shake. 

“Hey,” she said, suddenly remembering something she’d meant to ask him all morning. “I was gonna ask Lip, but since he’s, you know,” she rolled her eyes, “Would you help me set up for Mickey’s wedding? Dad’s making me help.”

“Oh yeah,” Ian shot her another one of those smiles. “Sure. Is your ah, your dad going to be there?”

“No, probably not.” 

“Then I’ll be there,” he said, walking her to the door. Mandy gave him a hug goodbye, clinging a little tighter than usual. The door slammed shut behind her.

 

**

Mandy wasn’t sure how she ended up here. She’d been on the L, hand fisted in her hoodie, fingers wrapped around that butterfly knife, thinking about Ian. There was something wrong with him, something that even Fiona had noticed, and Mandy hadn’t even known. She’d been so swept up in Karen and Lip and getting Lip into school and away from Karen that she hadn’t even noticed. Last she heard, Ian wasn’t seeing anyone, and she didn’t think he’d gotten into any trouble lately. Except, he was hanging out with Mickey more and more recently, and though he was her smartest brother, Mickey was also a heartless dickhole with no moral compass. She thought that maybe she’d ask him if he got Ian mixed up in anything dangerous the next time she saw him. 

She was still thinking about Ian when she was hit with a wave of loneliness, crashing into her, leaving her feeling wrecked and scared. Looking around the train, she didn’t see anyone she knew-- not that she expected to. She thought of all of her friends and all the boys she’d fucked, and couldn’t think of anyone who would want her around. Ian was her only real friend, and she’d just gotten kicked out of his house, more or less. She could go home, but her dad might be there and she didn’t want to deal with his shit. Or worse, he might not be home and Mandy’d have to deal with Mickey’s moody ass by herself, which somehow made the tight feeling in her chest worse. 

The realization that she had nowhere to go and no one to talk to made her clench her jaw. Her throat was constricting again, like it had that morning, only this time she didn’t have Ian’s shirt to hide her face in. Her eyes itched and she told herself it was because of the pot, but she knew it was a lie. She was coming down from her high fast. She wiped at her face roughly, brushing away unfallen tears. An old lady four seats down opened her mouth, probably to ask Mandy if she was okay, but the glare she sent the hag kept her silent. Mandy’s fingers tightened around the knife.

It was her own fault she was alone, and Mandy knew it. She’d been a bad friend, a bad person. She hit a girl with a car. She’d tried to kill a girl on the off chance her shitty boyfriend would take her out of this Hellhole when he left it. It was in that moment that she made her decision. It seemed like a good one at the time, but now, she wasn’t so certain. 

Standing in front of Karen’s hospital room, Mandy took a deep breath. The door was closed, and she could hear Batty Sheila’s distinctive voice from inside telling Karen about her day. Mandy imagined them in there, Karen laying in bed and Sheila sitting on the edge, looking at each other like they actually cared. 

Mandy raised her arm and made a loose fist with her hand. With a sharp, almost painful intake of breath, she knocked on the door.

**Author's Note:**

> queermccoy.tumblr.com


End file.
